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Any real arguments on your side or is the only argument being disrespectful?
Did anyone beat anyone into selling their land? Look, land is a commodity (I didn't come up with that concept, it's capitalism - remember?) and the "local folks" probably inherited what was taken by force from native people anyways, easy come easy go, karma is a b*tch... now it changes hands (at a pretty nifty profit for the locals too, it's not like it is given out for free, if so, where do I sign up?!) and some hands are different than others. When enough hands "join up" in a certain lifestyle the "locals" become the minority the "new locals" become the louder voice and the majority (with more money). It's America, the bed has been made, the newcomers are not doing anything illegal so I don't see what you are complaining about
All these McMansions, all these people coming in, they didn't force anyone into anything so why not go to the guy who sold his high-prized 160 acres for six times more than it was worth and ask him why he did it?
Note that I don't like what has happened to the small towns (just like you) but I cannot blame the guy coming in with the check, if something is not for sale, it's not for sale, if it is, it will be bought...
OD
Yes there is, one which you are fervently ignoring when myself and others saying it.
The people who DID NOT 'sell out' and who just want to live their lives in peace are the ones you are on here boorishly on here saying "if you don't like it, why did you sell out?"
THEY DIDN'T...OTHER people did.
If you want to EVER. Have a chance of being a good neighbor you need to stop ignoring this fact!
(and yes, I'm sure a small % sold some land and still live in the area, but not the majority.)
Exactly why I live in the city. I don't like any of that stuff and I know it. But if country folks like living that way, let em'. But they need to stay out of my city with those country habits!
I apologize for being so brusque in this thread. Certainly we need both country and city people. Both take a mindset of their own. I prefer city life although my roots are country from way back. But being in the city so long I have adapted well. Some people don't adapt.
I bought in a rural area and I get along fine although there are some things people do that **** me off from time to time.
1) Ride their four wheelers up and done the roadway. These things are very loud and I can hear them inside my house which is 300 yards off the road. It is illegal to ride on the roads in Tennessee and I do not appreciate the disturbance. What it is are people that live out here on small lots that figure they should buy a fourwheeler since they live in the country but they don't have anywhere to ride them. I normally keep my gates locked but a couple of times they have started "exploring" my land.
2) People around here have incredibly loud vehicles. It is not uncommon for some idiot to ride around in a pickup you can hear from a mile away. I don't know what that's all about but it shows an incredible lack of respect towards other people.
3) Poachers. I have watched three times late at night where someone jacklights deer that are on MY property. It is useless to call the game people and I do not feel it would be wise to confront them myself as I am sure alcohol is involved. I have also stopped people during hunting season on my land.
4) Methheads- Plenty of methheads around here. They will steal anything that isn't locked up.
5) People are slobs. We have free dumps sites in every town but it never fails that people will have a load of crap and decide to just dump it on the side of the road. The dump will take ANYTHING but these idiots can't be bothered to take it there. Another issue is slobs that will load up their household trash in the back of a pickup without securing it. They leave a trail of trash all the way to the dump alongside the road. One time I found a bag with an address in it- I went back and dumped it in their front yard.
ALSO people will dump unwanted animals on you. I already have six dogs so I end up having to take THEIR PROBLEM to the pound.
Yep. That's the fallacy a lot of people have when wanting to go rural, they imagine a quiet place where the locals respect nature and everyone is happy, hiking and loving life and enjoying the clean air and the stillness.
Reality is a lot of drunk, uneducated slobs raping nature, animals and their neighbors with their ATVs and guns (I am not against guns and I own my own but they have a purpose and it is not shooting into the air or into the traffic signs or deer or squirrels for fun).
I have long said that anyone who wants a true rural village atmosphere should move to Europe. Any small village or town will do. That's the countryside most people imagine, wealthy farmers, great looking fields (the villagers there actually still farm!), quiet and polite people etc.
There are isolated pockets of semi-rural areas in the States you can find with somewhat similar attitudes but very rare. We stayed with a friend in New Braunfels, TX in an old German neighborhood and it was like being in Germany (but New Braunfels is by no means rural or small, population 50,000+!). It was quiet, properties were immaculate, gardens full of veggies, fields full of hay and wheat, you could see pride of ownership. These were all old German families though.
The trash that now lives in most rural places in United States is a far cry from the pioneers who came and tamed the land, respected it and cultivated it. Most people I know want to buy a piece of land somewhere rural so they can go there on the weekend and rape it all day with their ATV. Disgusting. When they finally move there they are the locals who are pissed at the city folks who come to the same are and enact laws and ordinances to ban noise and shooting.
ognend, you clearly should NOT live in a rural area because, from your postings, you have a very jaded, hostile, and inaccurate view and tend to paint the entire rural experience with a very broad brush that does not reflect my experience moving to a rural area or, apparently, that of several other posters on here. In other words, you're exactly the kind of person who creates the attitudes towards folks moving in from the city that's being discussed here. (Or, at least, you're portraying yourself as such on this thread.)
Here's what we did when we were moving to a VERY tiny town (or actually to property outside of said very tiny town). We first did our homework to do our best to learn what to expect, on the assumption that we were moving into their neighborhood and that we should be the ones to adjust so we should know ahead of time whether we thought we could or not. Then, we acknowledged that no matter how much research we did, there were going to be surprises, and, again, since we were moving into an area where most of the people had lived there for years if not generations before we ever showed up, it was on us to adjust to those surprises rather than on them to change to suit us. We approached the whole thing as if we were moving to a foreign country and that the residents of that country would obviously know more about it than we did, and if there was something we didn't know and needed to know, we asked politely and respectfully and they were happy to help (and still are - 16 years later we're still learning, not surprising since it now takes a degree and often an advanced degree as well as a lot of experience to do a good job at what these "dumb hick farmers" do every day). We also made ourselves available to help - mostly things like fence repair or animal retrieval - I'm especially good with animals, somehow word has gotten around from our animals to the neighboring animals that I'm The Food Lady and there's that big, invisible to humans, tattoo on my forehead that says "Softy" - but whatever we can do to help, we will, while NOT telling them how they should be doing it because it's done so much better by the smart folks in the city. (Because, fact is, it isn't.)
As a result, we've learned that those dumb hick farmers include attorneys, geologists, extremely savvy businessmen, published authors, successful artists, the list goes on and on. The average person who judges people on their appearance or whether they live in a rural area and views the latter with disdain never finds this out because they can be spotted coming a mile away and those folks don't see any good reason to engage them in conversation and plenty of reason not to do so.
You commented on the fact that I'm a real estate agent. Yes, I occasionally sell rural property. Notice what I said above about what we did before moving to the country? Guess what I, in the course of my business, advise anyone contemplating moving to the country to do?
I learned as a young girl that the old guy in the overalls who lets you go fishing with him in his jon boat on his bass lake just might be able to purchase small countries if he's of a mind to and hobnobs with Presidents and kings when he's not home on the farm and that people who assumed he was dumb and unsophisticated because they saw him living on a farm in a small town never got to do business with him because they failed the intelligence test, never mind the civility test. That was a lesson well-learned that has served me well over the course of my life.
The trash that now lives in most rural places in United States is a far cry from the pioneers who came and tamed the land, respected it and cultivated it. Most people I know want to buy a piece of land somewhere rural so they can go there on the weekend and rape it all day with their ATV. Disgusting. When they finally move there they are the locals who are pissed at the city folks who come to the same are and enact laws and ordinances to ban noise and shooting.
OD
In addition to all your OTHER innacuracies... You are historically inaccurate!
Research the dust bowl, hydronic mining, and many other practices that 'the pioneers' did on a day to day basis.
People who look down their self-styled, patrician noses on anyone they deem less educated, intelligent, traveled, worldly and cosmopolitan than themselves.
We moved from the capitol city of a large state in which we worked in politics and legislation to a rural place in the middle of the Ozarks in which we derive our mailing address from the rural post office of a village with a population of 167 that's nine miles from our home.
We made the move knowingly, purposely and with a good idea of what we were getting ourselves into and after three years here we still love it and get along well with all the "locals" we have contact with.
At issue is the fact that we didn't as much move away from a place we'd come to dislike as we moved to a place we wanted to be. If we'd wanted to bring with us that which we left we wouldn't have left in the first place 'cause we already had it.
In addition to all your OTHER innacuracies... You are historically inaccurate!
Research the dust bowl, hydronic mining, and many other practices that 'the pioneers' did on a day to day basis.
I am all familiar with all the atrocities pioneers did to the land, animals and native people. However, a lot of them moved from somewhere else and treated the new land with respect. I guess I should have been more explicit - my bad.
ognend, you clearly should NOT live in a rural area because, from your postings, you have a very jaded, hostile, and inaccurate view and tend to paint the entire rural experience with a very broad brush that does not reflect my experience moving to a rural area or, apparently, that of several other posters on here. In other words, you're exactly the kind of person who creates the attitudes towards folks moving in from the city that's being discussed here. (Or, at least, you're portraying yourself as such on this thread.)
Here's what we did when we were moving to a VERY tiny town (or actually to property outside of said very tiny town). We first did our homework to do our best to learn what to expect, on the assumption that we were moving into their neighborhood and that we should be the ones to adjust so we should know ahead of time whether we thought we could or not. Then, we acknowledged that no matter how much research we did, there were going to be surprises, and, again, since we were moving into an area where most of the people had lived there for years if not generations before we ever showed up, it was on us to adjust to those surprises rather than on them to change to suit us. We approached the whole thing as if we were moving to a foreign country and that the residents of that country would obviously know more about it than we did, and if there was something we didn't know and needed to know, we asked politely and respectfully and they were happy to help (and still are - 16 years later we're still learning, not surprising since it now takes a degree and often an advanced degree as well as a lot of experience to do a good job at what these "dumb hick farmers" do every day). We also made ourselves available to help - mostly things like fence repair or animal retrieval - I'm especially good with animals, somehow word has gotten around from our animals to the neighboring animals that I'm The Food Lady and there's that big, invisible to humans, tattoo on my forehead that says "Softy" - but whatever we can do to help, we will, while NOT telling them how they should be doing it because it's done so much better by the smart folks in the city. (Because, fact is, it isn't.)
As a result, we've learned that those dumb hick farmers include attorneys, geologists, extremely savvy businessmen, published authors, successful artists, the list goes on and on. The average person who judges people on their appearance or whether they live in a rural area and views the latter with disdain never finds this out because they can be spotted coming a mile away and those folks don't see any good reason to engage them in conversation and plenty of reason not to do so.
You commented on the fact that I'm a real estate agent. Yes, I occasionally sell rural property. Notice what I said above about what we did before moving to the country? Guess what I, in the course of my business, advise anyone contemplating moving to the country to do?
I learned as a young girl that the old guy in the overalls who lets you go fishing with him in his jon boat on his bass lake just might be able to purchase small countries if he's of a mind to and hobnobs with Presidents and kings when he's not home on the farm and that people who assumed he was dumb and unsophisticated because they saw him living on a farm in a small town never got to do business with him because they failed the intelligence test, never mind the civility test. That was a lesson well-learned that has served me well over the course of my life.
I agree with you on the worth of doing research on anything that will make a significant difference in your life. That, obviously, includes moving to a new place.
However, my point is that most rural towns, especially East, midwest and south are trashy. Heck, I will throw into that New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona etc. In New Mexico most small towns have crime rates of 500+ and some even 900-1000!
I can go state by state and we will eventually conclude that most rural places are high crime, loud and infested with ATVs, alcohol and gunshots galore. 15 old cars next to a mobile is not uncommon either.... Dogs running loose etc. And it ain't the city folks doing this (most people accuse the wealthy newcomers on this forum so obviously they are not the ones accumulating the extra junk cars or litters of dogs or throwing garbage near roadways).
The situation in places like WY is maybe different since there is more money in those small towns (the ranchers are wealthier) but for the majority of the country, rural is poor, trashy and loud.
My point was exactly what you said, actually, most city people should do their research before moving somewhere rural because most city people imagine European rural - small villages like from English, German or French countryside where farmers actually still farm and villages are peaceful, they look neat and show pride of ownership.
Now, onto your "guy in the overalls" reference. I think it is high time we all understood the fact that only 2.5% of US population farms. Most likely today in a rural area it will the "guy in camo on an ATV". Most "cowboys" nowadays don't ride a horse and don't touch cows but they sure love running around in their souped up duallies with aggressive treads and loud mufflers. Heck, I actually ride my horse almost every day and I have done it in the mountains of Wyoming and on the streets in Florida or Texas. I don't lay any claim on the term cowboy or rural but I think I actually live a more "cowboy" or "rural" lifestyle than any of the "locals" you so vigorously defend
Sad to say but I think it is the culture. People just love shooting stuff, living "off leash", making noise and generally acting inconsiderate and it is much easier to do that out in the boonies where there are no ordinances or enforcement of said ordinances - something these folks could not do in a city. However, a lot of people actually like their countryside clean, noise and pollution free etc. When the two groups come in contact, there is bound to be trouble
Yes there is, one which you are fervently ignoring when myself and others saying it.
The people who DID NOT 'sell out' and who just want to live their lives in peace are the ones you are on here boorishly on here saying "if you don't like it, why did you sell out?"
THEY DIDN'T...OTHER people did.
If you want to EVER. Have a chance of being a good neighbor you need to stop ignoring this fact!
(and yes, I'm sure a small % sold some land and still live in the area, but not the majority.)
It is unfortunately "us vs. them" when it comes to this issue. Rural vs city, conservative vs liberal yadda, yadda, yadda.
I did not say everyone is bad - there are stupid people on both sides of the equation. Sadly though, it has become very difficult to just find a quiet, clean small town that shows "pride of ownership". Don't get me wrong, I wish there were many more.
OD
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and villages are peaceful, they look neat and show pride of ownership.
